Microscopic study of tetrahedrally symmetric nuclei by an angular-momentum and parity projection method

Abstract

We study the properties of the nuclear rotational excitations with hypothetical tetrahedral symmetry by employing the microscopic mean-field and residual-interaction Hamiltonians with angular-momentum and parity projection method; we focus on the deformed nuclei with tetrahedral doubly-closed shell configurations. We find that for pure tetrahedral deformation the obtained excitation patterns satisfy the characteristic features predicted by group-representation theory applied to the tetrahedral symmetry group. We find that a gradual transition from the approximately linear to the characteristic rigid-rotor, parabolic energy-vs.-spin dependence occurs as a function of the tetrahedral deformation parameter. The form of this transition is compared with the similar well-known transition in the case of quadrupole deformation.